


the island

by vgaeu



Category: LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: Angst, F/F, kinda sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-15 08:43:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19610407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vgaeu/pseuds/vgaeu
Summary: where hyunjin never learns when to let go of her dreams





	the island

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by beach house's [rain in numbers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqWCsWI8MgQ)  
> 

Hyunjin rowed endlessly, her oars pushing tediously through dark water as the waves crashed relentlessly against the splintering wood. She sought refuge in the yellow glow of her lamp, its fleeting presence an only temporary substitution for the promise of the island soon in sight.

The island where night was but a distant memory and the air was light with exuberance, its inhabitants emanating the same warmth that radiated from the sun. The island where she could finally be happy, leaving behind the desolateness of the open sea. The island that would soon come if she just held on.

With the sun now absent in her sky, it was hard to tell how long she had pushed on, the days melting into weeks and the weeks into months. 

It had been so long since her hands were an entity separate from that of the wooden poles and it had been so long since she had lived a life on steady ground, a life where she needn’t ceaselessly concern herself with staying afloat. A life where she wasn’t so utterly alone.

But she had been so willingly cast from the ship, the rope bound upon her wrists tighter than the fingers that had once so jubilantly intertwined with hers as they boarded. The hands that once caressed her cheek ever so tenderly now clutching unto the shaky knife pressed against her back, nudging her onto the tiny rowboat that hung from the edge. 

“Go.” She was told once more, the voice prickled with the hazy fog that had tormented it for so many years, one that was haplessly born from her aimless steering and the promise of a land that would never come. “Please, I’m so tired. Just go.” 

Hyunjin turned back around, her eyes a cloud that had begun to shake desperately, pouring with the stickiness of a summer rain.

“Please, we will get there soon. I promise.” But Heejin shook her head, her voice growing with the closing distance of the lightning and when the thunder rang, she finally burst, the dam that had begun crumbling beneath the weight of the falls now nonexistent.

“There is no fucking island! There is no one destination for the things you seek! We can’t help but to fall apart, to grow weathered by the passing storms and the crashing waves but sometimes, there is nothing we could do but let go!” 

The uncompromising answer was one she had heard time and time again, a knife that twisted forever in her hopeful heart.

“I refuse to turn back. Not when we’re so close.” 

“Then I don’t want you on this ship anymore.” And with eyes squeezed shut, Heejin shoved her forward, Hyunjin still protesting as she fell against the wooden floor. 

She forced the cries from her head as her blade met the ropes, the fraying fibers soon unraveling with the weight of her rowboat as it came falling into the ocean with Hyunjin in tow. And all Hyunjin could do was watch from below as Heejin took the wheel, finally setting sail for a home she had lost in her so long ago. 

But Hyunjin didn’t regret the stubbornness she had dubbed tenacity and though her arms ached and her breath fell ragged with each exhale, they were but an inexpensive price to pay in comparison to the reward she would soon reap. 

“We are so close.” She whispered to herself, tediously patching the doubt that had begun to spring like the leaks in her boat. “We’re almost there.”

The rain felt different in the open air, her hair matted against her face and her shirt soaked, sticking to her skin. Gone was the bubbling laughter insisting for her to shut the window, the gentle hands tugging her back into the warmth of the cabin. 

“Stop! You’ll get everything wet!” Heejin had cried and she pulled the glass in to close its gaps between the walls before spinning around to meet her lover, the girl giggling with the kisses that she peppered like rain drops across her skin. Hyunjin lowered her hands to the small of her back, letting her lean against her chest as they swayed to the radio, its speaker softly singing the song that they so loved.

Everything felt perfect.

There was a flash of light and Heejin perked her head, shutting her eyes in deep concentration as she counted beneath her breath, Hyunjin only smiling silently as she watched her, letting her whispers wash over her before shutting her own eyes. 

“... Fifteen… sixteen… seventeen… eighteen… nineteen… twenty-” And with the rumble in the sky Heejin had been awaiting, she stopped. “Wow, only four miles away.” 

“It’s getting closer.” 

Hyunjin opened her eyes to the dark sea once again, her feet wet with the water that had begun to rise above her ankle. Spotting the new splintering between the boat's bottom boards, she removed her coat, exposing her skin to the stinging rain before shoving it into the crack, stifling the leak.

“We’re almost there. It shouldn’t be much longer.”

The empty tin cans clattered among one another as the boat continued to rock, a constant reminder of her ending food supply.

“Almost there.” 

Another week passed as she carefully scooped the last of the potatoes into her mouth, going as far as to drink the juice it had left behind before letting the can fall with a splatter to the puddled ground. She had begun to run out of things long ago, out of spare clothes to cover the endless leaks and out of medicine to curb her racking cough.

“Soon.” Fell the utter from chapped lips as the waves lulled her to sleep.

When the storm came to an end, the two girls emerged from separate bunks with glassy eyes and raspy throats. 

"Soon." The empty promise dangled loosely from her tongue. "When we get to the island, everything will be better."

It had become a daily mantra now, a constantly refining tale of a land born from a hopeful dream, one far away from the mess they had steered themselves into. 

"When is soon?" Came the bitter response and Hyunjin forced herself to look into the pools that were threatening to spill, the face stone with a hundred regrets. Her hands shook as they left her side, her feet dragging with the weight of her heart as she brought herself towards the other girl. 

"I'm sorry."

Hyunjin jolted awake to the sound of a blare, watching as the white trawler boat cut across the open sea and her heart blossomed with hope, her eyes scanning for the familiar yellow lettering upon its hull.

“Heejin?” But it wasn’t.

A small girl that barely poked from her raincoat, climbed out from the cabin and shouted to her incomprehensibly before sliding from the rope that hung from her boat. She dug her feet into the side of the ship when they were close, reaching out a hand to bring the emaciated girl on board.

"Your boat is sinking! Take my hand!" The urgency in her voice a monsoon but her slender fingers only grasped at the empty air.

"No!" Hyunjin rained, her hands refusing to leave the oars she had made her crutches. "I'll be fine!"

"You will drown if you continue this way!" An all too familiar reminder she only viewed as a threat came piercing through her blanket of delusion.

"The island is near. I don't need your help." She insisted, peeling the adhesive backing from her intransigent words and plastering them down the tears of the fabric. And when she drew the cloth back around her shoulders, a sudden wave parted them, pulling Hyunjin deeper into her head as she watched the girl shrink with their growing distance.

But soon the orange flame came to its end, consuming the last of the thin wick it had chased endlessly for the past month and the yellow glow finally gave way to black, plunging Hyunjin into complete darkness. 

And she panicked, peeling her fingers from the wood that they had begun to grow into and lying them across the rowboat as she sifted desperately through the clutter on the floor for a taste of light, despair soon becoming a familiar unwanted presence. 

What temporary happiness that once spilled smoke during her innumerable nights was now gone, the girl finally, truly feeling the weight of the emptiness. And it was an inescapable one at that, a mocking wave coming pummeling against her boat, her oars soon swallowed by the unforgiving sea.

And that was that. 

Hyunjin let her back hit the bottom of her crumbling boat. Lying still, fists pounding repeatedly against an empty chest, the hollow echoing of a knock knock with the loss of a heart that had been torn from her.

She screamed into the abyss, a hoarse rawness swallowed by the eternal darkness, the hot tears from her face mingling with the spray of the sea. 

And she drifted on endlessly as the water just kept rising, the girl forcing herself to keep her eyes open for just another day, day after day. But despite her efforts, the sea soon overtook her and she never got to set foot on the sandy beaches she comforted herself with for months, never got to relish in the sweetness of its strawberries or the tenderness of its hopeful air. 

But it wouldn’t have mattered if she had hung on for another few days or another few years.

Because Heejin was right and Hyunjin sighed, burrowing herself deep beneath her sea of blankets, letting what little resolve that she had left fall with the cries through her chapped lips, ignoring the loud rapping against her bedroom door. 

There was no island.

**Author's Note:**

> hi let me know what u thought!  
> [curious cat](https://curiouscat.me/vgaeus)  
> 


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